"A person cooking is a person giving: Even the simplest food is a gift."

Laurie Colwin

Sunday, November 13, 2011

Golden brown: how to make caramel and line moulds with it

When I studied food science, it quickly became clear to
me that no aspect of it was as exact and complicated as sugar cookery. It’s a branch all on its own, and if you
became a food scientist specialising in sugar, you could pretty much be
guaranteed a highly paid job just about anywhere. If you were a straight man, it would also
just about guarantee that despite the inherent geekiness, you would get lucky with any straight woman on the planet. But I digress.

That said, instructions for making caramel (ie.
caramelised sugar, not caramel sauce, not candy-type caramel) at home are
complicated by SO MUCH BANGING AROUND that I want to address this dreadful
misrepresentation.

Yeah, I said it:
banging around. Like what? Brushing sugar crystals down the side of the
pan (YAWN), adding glucose syrup or indeed any ingredient to the sugar and
water (YAWN x 2), arresting cooking with water (YAWN x 3), using a thermometer
(YAWN x 4) and repeated cautions about how “tricky” it is to cook caramel
without crystallising the sugar (YAWN x 5) and how you must wash the pan
straight away or it will be impossible to clean (YAWN x 6).

Bullpats, all of it.
You don’t need to brush the sugar crystals down, you don’t need anything
other than sugar and water, you don’t need to arrest cooking in any way other
than moving the darned pan off the heat, you don’t need a thermometer (matter
of fact the high temperatures reached by caramelised sugar may make even a
sugar thermometer shatter), and it isn’t tricky at all – it’s easy, easy, easy.

The beauty of making caramel is that you have your eyes
(and to a lesser extent, your nose) to guide you to make sure you succeed. The dramatic shifts that take place in the
subtle changes in temperature during the stages of sugar cookery don’t apply
when you’re caramelising sugar. If it
looks done, it’s done. End of.

The only two rules – and they are easy ones – to remember
when making caramel are:

1. Dissolve every
single sugar crystal before mixture comes to the boil, and

2. Do not stir
mixture again once it’s come to the boil.
Not at all.

Failing to obey either of those rules will leave you with
a crystallised mixture that nothing can salvage.

Ready to get your caramel on? Let’s go!

MAKING CARAMEL AND LINING MOULDS AND PANS WITH CARAMEL

Ingredients:

2 parts sugar (see notes below)

1 part water

What you do:

1. Place sugar and
water in a saucepan and place over medium-low heat. Stir occasionally until every single sugar
crystal is dissolved. (In stirring, by
the way, don’t go mad: just run a spoon across the bottom of the pan as many
times as it takes.) There is no need to
brush down the sugar crystals on the side of the pan, just make sure the sugar
suspended in the water is dissolved. Do
not allow to come to the boil.

2. When sugar is
completely dissolved, increase heat to high and boil steadily until sugar
begins to change colour. At this point,
you may want to swirl the pan to encourage even cooking. Caramel will be ready when it’s coloured
amber to golden brown, according to preference. It will also smell caramelly (trust me on this). From golden brown it’s only a few seconds to burnt, however, so get the pan off
the heat immediately and work quickly to use the caramel. Forget about cleaning the saucepan for now!

3. To line a pan
or moulds with caramel, quickly pour caramel into pan or individual moulds (eg.
ramekins or crème caramel moulds). With
protected hands, swirl caramel around the base and sides of the mould. Allow to set for a few minutes before
proceeding with recipe.

* My one caution
during this whole affair is to PLEASE protect your hands when lining the
moulds. It’s not necessary when cooking
the sugar, but definitely necessary when lining, for two reasons. The first reason is that the moulds get
BLOODY HOT. The second is the tyranny of
burning yourself with caramel: not only
is caramel much, much hotter than boiling water, but burns need cold water, and
if you put cold water on caramel on your skin, the caramel will solidify. Try to pull it off, and it will take skin off
with it. So be careful, but don’t
panic: in making caramel at least once a
month all my adult life, I have never once suffered a caramel burn.

* What do you do
with that pan? Fill it up with water (it
will spit if it’s still hot, so stand back just a tad), and set it on the
stove. Bring it to the boil, and the
caramel will dissolve away. Any stubborn
burnt bits will just scrub off with a wire scrubby thing.

* Caramel isn't just for lining moulds. Its uses are myriad: arrest cooking with cream or fresh juice (blood orange is awesome) to make a divine sauce, add to stews and braises for richness and je ne sais quoi like the Vietnamese do, add butter and vanilla to make gorgeous chewy caramels, or mix in roasted nuts to make croccante or no-fuss praline.

2 comments:

I've always been terrified of making caramel - sugar burns - waste of sugar - ruin the pot. You have taken some mystery out of it. My father was a chemist and often commented on the chemistry of cooking and not go all gaga.